3. Many Israelis feel offended by the way in which the Holocaust is exploited in the Diaspora. They even feel ashamed that the Holocaust has become a civil religion for Jews in the United States. They respect the works of Alfred Kazin, Irving Howe, and Marie Syrkin. But of other writers, editors, historians, bureaucrats, and academics they say, using the word Shoa, which is the Hebrew for Holocaust : « There's no business like Shoa business ».

4. The Eichmann trial in 1961 [...] was exploited in a cold-blooded way as «a means of practical policy, aimed at practical gains». – One of the principal gains, [Boaz Evron] says, was to heighten the sense of guilt of the Germans : to put Germany in a situation of permanent disadvantage in the eyes of the world and to exploit this situation not only by extracting still greater payments in reparation for the crimes of the Nazis, but by insisting at the same time (quite rightly) that mere money could not compensate for the sufferings of the Jews [...] moral blackmail [...] moral blackmail.

7. I first heard the bitter pun « there's no business like Shoah business » while working at YIVO [Institute for Jewish Research], an institution almost exclusively staffed by Holocaust survivors or their children. The joke acknowledged the seemingly limitless appetite for Holocaust materials, mainly as fund-raising tools within the Jewish community, but also as a source of identity – even a perverse ethnic pride – as well as the antidote to the fascination with Nazism outlined above.

8. [In a B'nai B'rith lecture in Jerusalem, Sir Immanuel Jakobovits, the British Chief Rabbi, said that the Holocaust was not] an event different from any previous national catastrophe [for the Jews] in spite of the existence of « an entire industry, with handsome profits for writers, researchers, filmmakers, monument-builders, museum-planners and even politicians ».

9. War and Remembrance [...] only minimalizes the historical events and issues it is exploiting. The deliberate extermination of millions of Jews and the death and mutilation of many other millions in the Second World War are merely an expensive and logistically complex backdrop to the soap operatics of the plot, and the promotion of products sanctioned by author Herman Wouk. [...] all the sufferings [...] have once again been reduced to mere fodder for the merchants of conspicuous consumption.

10. The newspaper Ha'Aretz (December 16) published an attack by a director of the Yad V'shem Holocaust Center on the Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. The displeasure of Yad V'Shem over what it sees as the commercialization of the Holocaust by the Wiesenthal Center has long been known, but this is the most open attack yet [...]. [Said the director :] « The Jewish people does many vulgar things but the Wiesenthal Center raised it to a complete level : The optimum use of sensitive issues in order to raise money... ».

12. [Said Ms Miller :] «I do not feel comfortable with the Holocaust being used as the vehicle for these huge fund-raising dinners for this [Simon Wiesenthal] centre, the “celebratisation” of the Holocaust. [...] I think that using the Holocaust to raise money to sell Israel Bonds is not an appropriate way to contribute to those who died. I really don't want to see the Holocaust become another fund-raising vehicle for any group. I'm not even comfortable with all these private, large donations to the US Holocaust Museum.» [...] Ms Miller resents commemoration being used not only as a fund-raising tactic, but in order to gain political support for Israel.

13. Too many books are written on the Holocaust. There are too many films and television plays that exploit the subject such as [...]. There is a fascination with the Holocaust and with Nazism. There may, in fact, be « no business like Shoah business ». The problem is that many of these productions, if not most, are historically inaccurate, sentimental, roma[n]tic, exotic, and hyperbolic and so they ultimately distort and cheapen the Holocaust. – The popularization and commercialization of the Holocaust is not only unhistorical but it is antihistorical [...]. – There are still many survivors alive and already their past has been turned into falsification and fiction.